Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Seeking Help

“In my lifetime I faced many years of abuse, and a great deal of depression, and illness. I find a shimmer of grace when I cleave to the Psalms. Church has never fully resonated with me. I found the Chabad.org website and I feel such a deep connection to the Jewish teachings that it has helped me to overcome the days when I feel lost and like I am far from my home. I also turned to Eastern meditation and would reach temporary states of serenity or joy and then lose the experience upon opening my eyes and facing reality again. I am at a point where I feel afraid and hopeless, homeless and view my surroundings with despair, failed relationships, bad memories, longing to be guided and spiritually supported. I feel like I have reached a limit. How do I still the voices of anxiety and raging depression? I see no clear path for my life to take?

Yours Sincerely,

Delene”

Gutman’s response:

Shalom Delene,

Do not despair. The truth is, whatever we think of determines our mood. When we think about the many negative things in the world, we become negative. When we think about the many positive things in the world, we become positive.

Try this for five minutes. Sit there and think only about the good things that are going on in your life…you have food, no headache, not in a mental institution, no medical operations scheduled, and on and on. When you try to do this your mind is so accustomed to being negative that it is going to try to remind you of something negative. Watch and see, but for these five minutes, don’t let the negative side win. Whenever a negative thought comes, quickly return to listing the good things that are going on in your life.

Let me know if you are able to do this for five minutes without a single negative thought pushing its way into your consciousness.

If you do it, you will feel happy about yourself and your life.

And if you can do it for five minutes, you can also do it for ten…if you really want. The more you do it, the better at it you will become.

Then you will see that you have been prolonging your miserable feelings by dwelling on negative things, even things that are no longer going on in your life.

Delene responds: “Thank you for your kind advice. I have been practicing every day what you said. I do understand that I have given the negative thoughts all the power, and have done this for most of my life. It definitely takes a lot of work and practice to shift my focus but I am determined to work at it. I do know that I have a lot of pressure on myself to make this ‘better life’ and in the process I didn’t accept that so much was simply out of my control.

Thank you again for taking the time to guide me, for this too I am grateful.”

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